The Impact of Alexithymia on Quality of Life in a Sample of Healthy University Students: A Structural Equation Modeling Approach

The relationship between alexithymia and quality of life has attracted the attention of researchers recently. However, these studies have been conducted on patient groups or the general population. This study aims to determine the simultaneous effect of the level of alexithymia on the components of quality of life in a healthy university student population using the structural equation model. The sample of this cross-sectional study consists of 183 healthy volunteer university students without mental and physical illnesses. Sociodemographic Data Form, Short Form-36 (SF-36) Quality of Life Scale, and Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) were applied to the participants. In this current study, 48.6% (n = 89) of the participants were female and 51.4% (n = 94) were male, and the mean age was 21.88 ± 2.11 years. 13.1% (n = 24) of the volunteers were categorized as alexithymic, 25.2% (n = 46) as borderline alexithymic and 61.7% (n = 113) as non-alexithymic. It has been shown that Toronto Alexithymia Scale has an inverse significant and moderate effect on the SF-36 Quality of Life Scale (Standardized regression coefficient -0.40). Our study shows that alexithymia has a detrimental impact on the quality of life of healthy university students who are not suffering from any medical or mental illnesses. It is thought that it would be beneficial to develop specific intervention methods for alexithymic individuals to remove these alexithymia-related problems and improve quality of life. Longitudinal research in the future will be beneficial in explaining the causal relationships between alexithymia and quality of life.